The Coming of Jesus – The Jewish Messiah, Part 1

WE ARE LIVING IN A TIME LIKE WE HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE, AND THERE ARE PREDICTIONS OF DISASTER AND UNCERTAINTY COMING FROM EVERY DIRECTION, BUT WE WHO TRUST IN THE WORD OF GOD AND KEEP OUR LIVES COMMITTED TO THE GOD THAT STANDS BEHIND HIS WORD NEED NOT FEAR WHAT IS AHEAD. THEREFORE LET US TAKE A FRESH LOOK AT WHAT IS WRITTEN AND LEAVE ALL THE SPECULATION TO THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO READ THE WORD OF GOD. IT IS NOT WRITTEN FOR THE UNBELIEVERS OF THE WORLD, BUT FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE AND TRUST THE SPIRIT OF GOD FOR A TRUE REVELATION OF HIS WORD. I WILL AGREE THAT THERE WILL BE A GREAT EVENT TAKE PLACE ON THIS PLANET WHEN TWO THOUSAND YEARS HAVE EXPIRED, BUT IT WILL BE CALCULATED ACCORDING TO GOD’S TIME TABLE, (WHICH IS PROPHETIC TIME OF 360 DAYS TO THE YEAR) AND NOT BY THE WORLD’S ROMAN CALENDAR WHICH CONSISTS OF 365 1/4 DAYS TO THE YEAR. FURTHERMORE GOD’S TIMETABLE FOR THE TWO THOUSAND YEARS WE ARE INTERESTED IN STARTED WHEN THEY CRUCIFIED THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND NOT WHEN THE EMPEROR OR ROME DIED, SO LET US STUDY THESE SCRIPTURES PRAYERFULLY AND SETTLE IT IN OUR HEART’S THAT GOD IS STILL IN CONTROL. THERE VERY WELL MAY BE SOME KIND OF UNUSUAL SITUATION HIT THE WORLD WHEN THE JULIAN CALENDAR YEAR 1999 ENDS, BUT WHATEVER DISRUPTION WE MAY SEE BECAUSE OF THE Y2K SITUATION, OR WHATEVER, NONE OF IT WILL BE A SURPRISE TO THE CREATOR.

We have a little chart up here, showing how prophetic time and calendar time work out as we approach the year 2000 A.D. according to the calendar. Some of you might say, Bro. Jackson, you are repeating a lot of things you have said before. Yes, I am, and I am doing it for one specific purpose which you will understand as we go along. In the past few weeks you have heard the Millennium, the Millennium, the Millennium. What does it mean? Does it mean Jesus is coming when the year 2000 rolls around? No. That event cannot come that soon. Does it mean that the systems of the world will be thrown into chaos? That is a possibility, so let us prayerfully look into the word of God and see what He has said about the time we are living in. Philosophers and historians of all descriptions around the world have added their calculations and their analysis, that something is about to take place somewhere in or near the end of the year as we approach the year 2000. Some will say, Nature itself tells us something is about to take place. Well that is something we cannot deny. Civil unrest and economic breakdown tells us something is in the making. That is all true. Distress of nations, tribes, races rising against their former friends and all such like, just like the situation in Bosnia. I saw this morning in the news, a great massacre. It is strange, when the Communists ruled, they stayed quiet, but the minute the Communist spirit was lifted, it went right back to some of those ancient ways. They are all white people, so you cannot blame that on the color of their skin. If you go back into the history of it, you will see that it is between the Moslem and the Catholic. It is as old as time itself. No doubt there are some sitting here today that have heard some of these philosophers and historians making their predictions, Well could it be that the Lord could come in the year 2000? We know God always does something around the era of 2000 years of time. That is true saints, so this message is to acquaint you with time itself. We do not deny the fact that nature is expressing itself like it never has before, with earthquakes and devastating storms. We have just come through an ice storm in this area like I have never seen in my life time. The meteorologists were saying, This thing is coming in from the southwest, and they were forecasting a devastating affect in this area, like power outages and all of that. Thank God, there was none of that to speak of, but when I got up the next morning and saw the ground covered with ice, which was something I have seen before, but it never lasted over two or three days and then it was gone, but this lasted almost two weeks. Nevertheless when we begin to talk about how soon the Lord is coming, and whether it will take place when the year 2000, is ushered in, can we allow ourselves to jump to conclusions as certain one’s forecast the various possibilities? Is this what we see in the written word of God? Christian people, listen to me; the Bible gives us a very clear picture to understand time by, and that is what we have to look at, lest we be tossed to and fro. This blue line on our chart (wide line on top) represents Julian calendar time, that every time you want to know what the day is, you walk to that calendar and you know it is such and such a date by Roman calendar time. That is what that blue line represents: the time we have been going by for two thousand years. These little blocks painted in different colors, represent (within time itself) certain prophetic calendar events that line up with the scriptures. These are prophetic events which took place, that led up to the first coming of Christ. We can say this, If the first coming of Christ fell precisely according to those figures, which was really a yardstick for the Jewish nation to go by, His second coming will be according to the signs the scriptures point us to also. True believers will acknowledge those signs, while the world in general will be just like the entire Jewish nation was when Christ was born and came on the scene, totally ignorant of the whole program of God.

WHAT SAITH THE WORD OF GOD?

Let us turn to the book of Acts for our first scripture reading. That event has already come. He had fulfilled His hour and fulfilled that right there, being crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. Nobody can question it. In the book of Acts, in the 3rd chapter, let us notice as Peter is preaching, what he is telling the Jews. This is the second sermon. I am starting in the 14th verse of the 3rd chapter. He is in the temple area. “But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we (Peter is speaking present tense of the present disciples) are witnesses. And His name, through faith in His name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: (He is the one that was raised at the gate) yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers, But those things, which God before had showed (Listen to this; he is pointing back to Old Testament scriptures as he introduces this thought.) By the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” Precisely, right on the dot, was it fulfilled. If that was exact then, it is going to be exact the next time also. Let us stop listening to the philosophers and men that want to pick and peck. Sure they have some facts, but it is the way they play with them that is so irresponsible. Let us notice as we go on reading, because Peter is going to speak in the future tense, for our hour of time. “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the time of refreshing (that is coming up) shall come from the presence of the Lord; And He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, (Just listen to this.) which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” That is for our day and hour. Let us look into the Bible, instead of to these philosophers, these professors of science and all who want to indulge themselves in something they have no authority for. The sad part is, An awful lot of people will listen to them, and they will expect Jesus to come on the scene right at the year 2000. Well Professor So and So said so. Psychologist So and So said so. What will happen to those who trust in all those predictions when the year 2000, rolls around and Jesus still has not made His appearance? Then the unbelievers, the skeptics and scientists wills ay you are all a bunch of idiots. That is why we have governmental officials right now, that are wanting to put down any church that preaches the apocalypse, the second coming of Christ and other things of prophecy. Even in China, though they have given the Chinese Christians an opportunity to worship the Lord, they cannot preach the second coming of Christ. That should begin to show people exactly why, in the 19th chapter of Revelation, when Jesus is seen coming from the heavens, riding a white horse and His armies with Him, which is made up with such as you and me, along with the other saints from around the world, what is waiting to make war with Him: The world beast, the antichrist and the kings of the earth are gathered together, to do what? To make war against Him. Why? They do not want Him to come. They do not want their program and politics ruined. They have already polluted the earth. They have already polluted society. They do not want their Sodom and Gomorrah society interrupted, but thanks to God we have a promise in God’s word, that out of His mouth goeth a sharp two edged sword, that with it He should smite the nations and slay the wicked. Their dead bodies shall lie from one end of the earth to the other. Earthquakes then will be the order of the day, also volcano eruptions and every kind of disorder will be in season as God closes out this present world order and prepares the earth for the Millennial reign of Christ with His redeemed saints. Having said this, let us now begin to see what the Bible does say. Over there, is a chart that breaks time down into the different divisions. (We printed that chart in the January 1994 issue.) Some say no man knows when Jesus is coming. It is true no man knows the day or hour, but do not tell me it is not for us to know the year, because the Bible is very clear on that, if you know how God calculates time. That is not what Jesus was talking about. Five times in Matthew 24 and 25, you find, No man knows the day or hour. He repeated it, no man knows the day or hour, but He never did say we could not know the year. Let us go into Daniel, chapter 9. I pray God will help me put this message in language so that you can understand what I am saying. Sometimes people hear this over and over and say, I don’t understand it: it is just too deep. If I was up here talking on dollars and cents, I believe you would understand it, so just look at this as being that important to you. We have to get a picture of the time we live in: otherwise the door is going to be closed and we might look back and see that we have missed it. God did not put all these things in His book for no reason whatsoever: He put them in there for our learning. For instance, here on the chart we see first 49 and then 434, so let us look at that for a little while. Daniel was in Babylon. He was carried there, along with the rest of the Jewish captives, to remain in captivity. Jerusalem had been besieged three times, and the last time prisoners were taken back to Babylon. The city was demolished. The temple was torn down. It was prophesied in the book of Jeremiah that the children of Israel were to sojourn in that strange land for seventy years. Daniel had taken account of how many years they had already been there. He began to wonder, Lord, what is going to happen to our people now? When are we going back home? What is the state of Jerusalem going to be? God sent an angel to speak to Daniel after a while. That angel is speaking to Daniel here in verse 22, of the 9th chapter. This is some of those things that were written, that Peter, when he was at the temple, could speak of, the things that God had so fulfilled. Those things had already been fulfilled. They were written first though, and for whose benefit? The Jewish nation of course, was the Jewish people of Judaism who like to say, Abraham is our father: we are proud of him. They missed it though concerning the Messiah, and crucified Him who many of their prophecies pointed to. Daniel, realizing that God had a purpose to be fulfilled, had been fasting and praying and interceding for his people, and for his homeland, therefore the angel was sent to speak with him, so let us notice as we read it. “And he (the angel) informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding.” Some say, But that is all too deep. It won’t be, when it is time for it to be understood. It is true, that many times a prophecy, when it is first written is misunderstood, just like a closed book. When it looks like it has a curtain over it, you just have to know it is not time for it to be understood, for it is not for the people of that particular hour of time, even though it is written and they have it to read and think about. When the time approaches that it is to be fulfilled, God tends to take the veil off and say, Now take a look. However our religious mind is usually so caught up in the traditions we have been taught, all we can seem to think of is that it is just too deep. You hear, I just simply cannot understand it. I just have to say, Maybe we are not serious enough about wanting to get out of here and get home. We need to take stock of our values. As we read this next verse the angel is continuing to speak to Daniel. “At the beginning of thy supplications (which is prayer) the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people.” (That is seventy weeks of years, which adds up to 490 years of total time.) Let me explain right now, what the angel is telling Daniel. He is specifically telling Daniel that there is going to be a time factor in which God starts a process that the Jewish people should take knowledge of, that when that time starts, the Jewish people should know that God is dealing with them, on their behalf, to take them back into their land. He lays a responsibility in their hand to restore and rebuild their temple, their city and so forth, to get everything ready for the coming of their Messiah. That is why we titled this message, “The Coming of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.” Bro. Jackson, don’t you think we ought to put Christ in there? Well, I have already done it right there. How many realize that? That is why I put that little catch like that. Well I thought He was Jesus the Christ. He is, because Messiah means the anointed One. That is all you can make Christ out of the Greek word that was used. I hope this help straighten up a few warped thoughts. I do not say that with any derogatory intent, I say it hoping to penetrate your mentality. He said, Seventy weeks. You and I know, when we think of the word week, we are talking about a seven day period. The word week, is a Greek word. It means, a period of seven. In ancient times the Jews never used a term called week. Look in Chronicles and Kings. This is the way they recorded time, On the first day of the month, the second day of the month, the seventh day of the month is the Sabbath. The eighth day of the month starts another seven day period, but they never referred to it as a week. They calculated it all in the record of the month, the eighth day of the month or the twenty first day of the month and so on. After the first period of captivity, when the Grecian era came in, then the Jews did begin to accept the Greek words, just like we have accepted the Roman calendar time as our measurement of time. I pray that I am saying these things in a way that people can catch certain important points. Seventy weeks were determined, and each week was a period of seven years each. Therefore from the time that period of time starts, he says, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people (the Jews) and upon the holy city, (Now the angel speaks the prophecy, the vision that Daniel sees, right through to the finished hour. That is in your day and mine, but back then, it was yet in the future.) to finish the transgression, (the national transgression) and to make an end of sins, (the people’s sins) and to make reconciliation (meaning the Jewish people will be reconciled back to God, out of dispersion) for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, (That puts you in the Millennium.) and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” When the Messiah is sitting in the holy place in the new temple, that is what anoints the most Holy. You can pour all the oil of any type you want to, but until the Jewish Messiah which is the anointed one from God Himself, sits there, there is not going to be one thing take place. How many understand that? Therefore the prophecy is not finished until that has run its course. That would bring you to the end of this period and start you into the Millennium. The angel even breaks this period down and says, “Know (understand, get the point) therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment (Bro. Jackson, where do we find that? The commandment was not given by the angel at that time. The commandment was something they were definitely to look for later. It came about in the writings of Nehemiah.) to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince (referring to his first advent) shall be seven weeks.” That is what this 49 week period represents. Where do we find this decree or commandment? We find it in the writings of Nehemiah. It became effective in the month of March. Historians date it the 14th of March 445 calendar time B.C., and we know B.C. time takes you back this way. B.C. is relegated according to the death of King Herod. All history, if you study it, Roman history, if you look at it seriously, was written in the chronological order of the reign of their emperors. The Jews read Chronicles and Kings, In the third year of Hezekiah, in the third year of this, the third year of that and so forth, because that is the way time was calculated. We put B.C. and A.D. simply because, as we come way past the advent and crucifixion of Christ, the Roman histories were still written just like they had formally been, but the Catholic church took it upon themselves, that since all other histories were written in the light of the beginning and death of kings, they felt like this King, who is the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, should mark a time when history should be changed and should be relegated from His birth toward His second coming. It took many monks, many Catholic historians, on two or three different occasions, to succeed with this plan and finally come together to establish a Roman calendar, wherein we no longer have to go back to seven hundred and eighty some years before the death of King Herod, to pick up the beginning of the Roman Empire or the building of the city, but they calculated backwards until finally they come approximately to the birth of Christ. This is why historians for years have been in disagreement as to when Jesus the Christ was born. You will even see some older histories that say He was born in 7 B.C., and some 4 B.C., right on down to 2 B.D., but as we stated in the seventy weeks of Daniel, in the last episode, We can figure it out precisely, that Jesus Christ was born two years and eighty nine days before the death of King Herod, which is almost three months, so that makes Him born in 3 B.C. Be sure you understand this: It is important to your revelation of the scriptures. He was born two years and eighty nine days before the death of King Herod, which makes it in the year 3 B.C. That corresponds to one of our latest articles I took out of the paper. After the man has shot at the different historians, he said, I use the latest historians of the Christian era, which says Christ was born in the 3rd year B.C. These carnal minded, earthly historians, can be as carnal and misled as can be, and even if they have no knowledge of their Savior, God will just let them play with figures and come up minus a lot of information, but we can take it from there because of our own research. It says here, “From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks.” What does this seven weeks add up to? 49 years. When you start 49 years, which is prophetic time, not calendar time, because prophetic time is 360 days through each prophetic year. Calendar time is 365 1/4 day to each Roman calendar year. So a lot of historians say, well Malachi prophesied 397, that is chronological writings of Malachi, but that brings you to the brink of 400 B.C. The first 49 years was definitely God’s way of leading the Jews to start this process of getting them to come back to the Jerusalem area, to start building Jerusalem and finish up the temple. Notice, that in that 49 years, many of the Jews that had come back had lost the picture of what they were supposed to do. Each man because solely interested in his own house. They were not putting their talents and labors together collectively to help add to the reconstruction of the city at all. That is when God sent Malachi and he rebuked them because of their ways.

MALACHI REBUKES THE RETURNED JEWS

Malachi came upon the scene and what was his message? It took Malachi at the end of that period of fruitlessness to rebuke those Jews that had neglected the work they were returned the accomplish. They had become so commonplace, even in what they were bringing to sacrifice, that God could no longer tolerate it. They brought wounded lambs, polluted this and that. He rebuked them for all that. Nothing was really dedicated. The revival under Malachi is what helped straighten up the attitude of the people and they began to change, especially their motives. Now as you pass through that era, we can say, no, there is no broken interval, that means God in His own sovereign mind marks the termination of how He looks at that time, and what He is going to start next, so remember that. “And threescore (which is sixty) and two weeks: the street shall be built again, (It speaks of the street as one, but this means every street of the collective city.) shall be built again, and the wall, (meaning walls) even in troublous times.” This begins to bring us in to that long era of political turmoil, because after the Babylonian fall, then came the Medo Persians. After they fall, here comes the Grecian era. When the Grecian era came, the Jewish people were having a lot of opposition from the Arabs. You could call them “the Palestinians,” in that day, but they were basically Arabs that still lived in the land. They did not want the Jewish people coming back, restoring things back to chronological Biblical order. Nevertheless we come to a Grecian era when a man by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes, a Syrian prince, had been elevated to the throne. He came to Jerusalem, decreed a certain thing against the Jewish people and passed on his way to Egypt. He was at war in Egypt at that time. He attacked the ancient city of Alexandria, which is at the mouth of the Nile River. By word of mouth, they had no telephones, no television, only word of mouth reached back to the Jews at Jerusalem that Antiochus Epiphanes had been killed. Oh, they jumped up and down with glee. So they broke the rules of what the Antiochus prince had told them to do. They began to restore things like it should be. Antiochus heard about it. He returned and set a decree, he was going to annihilate every Jew in Jerusalem. He sacrificed a sow on the altar (which was an abomination to God). He forbid the circumcision rite. Two women went ahead and circumcised their little male children, and he had the infants hung by their necks. All this was to agitate and scare the Jews into submission. They took the mothers of those two sons and boiled them in oil. This was a period when the little horn of Daniel 8 desecrated the sanctuary. Antiochus Epiphanes did this, then he was on his way to another place. At that time, there was an old Jewish patriarch, (I believe he had five sons): His name was Maccabe. His youngest son was named Judah. This old man went in and slew one of the Syrian guards, which infuriated all the rest, but God gave the Jewish people courage enough to rise against the yoke of the Syrians. There was a slaughter in Jerusalem like there had never been before. Remember now, I just read the scripture on the 62 weeks, how it shall cover a time of trouble. Right? These Maccabees set about to get rid of the Syrian yoke. They could not do it in a day of course. Neither did they do it in a month, nor in one year. It lasted over a period of years until finally the Maccabe revolt began to succeed, as their army got larger. The Syrians began to be defeated on every battle account. Antiochus made a blasphemous statement that he would go back to Jerusalem. God did not like it, so he fell over in his chariot with excruciating pain. He collapsed in his chariot and told his driver to drive fast. He died there in his chariot. When the news reached Jerusalem, that was a sign to the Maccabees. The Syrians by that time no longer had the courage to continue their atrocities. Some of the Maccabe sons had been killed. This is what covers that period that spoke of how the walls will be built in troublous times. When Judah, at the head of his volunteer army, entered Jerusalem, he conquered the Syrian forces that were garrisoned there. He slaughtered them. The rest escaped to the hills and mountains, and back to Syria. Judah entered the area, tore down all the sacrilege things the Syrians had commanded the Jews to erect. He cleaned the sanctuary and demanded everything return to the true Levitical law order of worship. He was the man that cleansed the sanctuary after a period of so many days. That is why the prophecy said, and the wall shall be built in troublous times. It covers this whole period. By the time the walls are built, the city is now built, and we come into the A.D. period. Jesus had been born, and certainly there was no announcement in the hierarchy of Judaism. God picked out the poor, simply minded people, just like He is doing even today, and revealed Him to them. If you think God is going to pick up some of these fellows like Professor Fosdick or Professor Snodgrass, and give them the revelation of His coming, you had better get you another book to study. God did not use that type of intellectuals when the first advent came and He is certainly not revealing His word to them today. Zechariah was a priest, but he was not an intellectual man to function in the priest order that he functioned in. God spoke to him about the son he and his wife longed for, and six months later, He sent an angel that appeared to a little girl in Nazareth. You would have thought it would have been the wife of one of the hierarchy priests, would no not? No. From a little town that did not have a very good name, Nazareth, came the Jewish Messiah. Here again is a simply minded person, not an illiterate by any means. The point is, God did not ring the bells at the hierarchy headquarters, he rang a bell in the heart of a few simple minded people. He will do the same today. When that angel came to Mary and told her the news, you know the scriptures in the gospels, that Mary had to go see her cousin Elizabeth. What a reunion, when she got to her cousin’s house and each woman began to relate their message. Joy bells began to ring in their hearts. That little infant John leaped in his mother’s womb and she prophesied. Did the world hear it? No. Do not ever think someone in Washington D.C. will ring a bell for the coming of Jesus Christ. It is not going to be that way. However across the land, and around the world, there is going to be little groups of people gathered together, with their hearts in tune with what is written concerning His second coming. I am just bringing it out this way for us to try to look at time, and what has transpired to this point. So from the birth of John the Baptist, to the birth of Jesus, it did not ring a bell in the Jewish temple, but when Jesus was twelve years of age, Joseph and Mary came to the temple to fulfill the ritual of that season and brought Jesus with them. Jesus had not gone to college, but He had knowledge other twelve year old’s did not have. After the hours passed by, Joseph and Mary departed to go back to Nazareth. The day was far spent, they thought Jesus was with some of the other young boys. You know how they like to play together, but later on they could not find Him with the others and when they asked, Where is our son? No one knew. They became very alarmed and went back to Jerusalem looking for Him. Where did they find Him? They found Him in the temple, talking to who? Dr. Fosdick and Professor Snodgrass. The Bible says they marveled at His wisdom, for they knew He had never learned letters, meaning He was not properly educated. How could He know such things? His mother said to Him, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. 49 And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? 50 And they understood not the saying which He spake unto them. 51 And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” When Jesus said to His mother, “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not (or don’t you know) that I must be about my Father’s business?” Do you think that rang a bell with that bunch of ecclesiastical big shots? No. But it sure rang a bell with Mary, and she just kept it all in her heart. Nevertheless He left there and followed Joseph and Mom back to Nazareth. He became subject to them in every way. The bible says He grew in stature, meaning physically, and in wisdom. He so conducted Himself that He began to have favor with the people and with God. Did this mean anything to the religious leaders at Jerusalem? No. Not one thing. During that time, the Holy Spirit had been teaching John the Baptist, and one day, out of the wilderness he came, right on time. There are those that say he went to the school of the Asene Jews. Well I have been there. John the Baptist was not schooled by the Asene Jews. He was schooled by God Himself. He just went to that area over there because it was the most isolated area he could find to be away from society, away from the hub bub of everyday programs. There he prayed and sought the will of God. It was in that general vicinity that John appeared. It was where the traffic passed over the Jordan River to the other side. One day, here came an ugly man out of the wilderness with honey dripping off his beard, wearing a camel skin over his mid section, ready to preach repentance to those passing by. He probably looked like some of the old pioneers that went west years ago. He was a man that had a revelation from God. I can just see him out there in the water as he would stop the passers by, coming from both ways. It was not long until he had a crowd. He began to preach and say things the normal Orthodox Jews had never heard before. Before he finished preaching they were getting out of their carriages and whatever means of travel they were in, to get a little closer to him. They began to make their way up to this ugly looking man, but ugly or not, he had a revelation that was on fire for God. What must we do? Some began to say. He said, Get ready for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He took them a little deeper into the water and baptized them. This became known in Jerusalem. It was not long until Caiphas and Herod heard about him. All of them heard about him before very long. So they sent some of the secondary priests as spies, to find out what they could. Go find out who that guy is. Is he that prophet? (We know what he was. He was the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:1-3. He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He was announcing, get ready, the advent of the Messiahship is coming.) I have to say today, Thank God He sent a man a few years ago, to help us find our way through all of the religious confusion we were surrounded by. No, saints, this religious world does not believe he was of any importance, but I say, Stick around, we are going to find out whether he had a message from God or not. We are going to find out that God’s word is right, and that this man set it in order for us. The critics think they are so right, but the word of God will stand sure regardless of what they say. With this in mind, I want to point you back a bit, because I marked 4 B.C., because that is approximately when Christ was born, in calendar time, that meant that from the time Christ was born, thirty four more years was in the making. He was crucified in the full year, and a part of 33. That is the way the historian write it, as they have calculated time backward to when He was crucified. With that in mind, when you take this calendar and break it down into prophetic time, the forty nine years and the four hundred and thirty four years, you get four hundred and eighty three prophetic years. When we count the date of Nehemiah’s writing, about when the decree was written, to the crucifixion of Christ, which was 33 A.D. in the third day of the month April, Christ was cut off, as the prophecy said. Let me finish the reading here. “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: and the people of the prince that shall come.” The people of the prince future, the prince was not yet then, and the word prince is with the small letter, so this shows it was not the Prince of peace, (Jesus the Christ) but another prince that shall come into the picture, so the people of that prince did come: They came in the year 69 A.D. They tore the temple down. They sacked the city. They slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews and sold the rest on three slave markets. Cairo, Constantinople, and Rome. That fulfilled the scriptures, for God had said, I will scatter you to the ends of the earth. There, you will remain until such and such time. With this all in mind, we know that Jesus was crucified on the exact day that this whole calculation of time pointed to. Why do I say that? Historians would say, Now Bro. Jackson, you said exact day. I did. But Bro. Jackson? Why is it written in the book of Revelation, in the 13th chapter, that the beast that will come up in the end time, in our day, somewhere along in here, the beast man himself, which is the antichrist, and he will be given power for the period of forty two months. But in the 11th chapter God said, I will give my two witnesses so much time, so we divide this week here. This is the seventieth week right here. The sixty nine weeks ended over there, when Jesus was crucified. This is the seventieth, but you divide it into two parts. I will give my two prophets power and they will prophesy. Where? In Jerusalem. To whom? The Jews. For how long? A thousand, two hundred and threescore days. That is exact. Right? Now let us look at the Bible instead of a lot of handed down tradition. When is Jesus Christ coming back physically? At the end of this week. What did Jesus say in Matthew 24? Immediately, after the tribulation of those days. But I thought. Stop right there, we have had too many buts already. That is why people are still ignorant about it. Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, the moon shall withdraw its light and the powers of heaven shall be shaken, then shall appear the sign of the coming of the Son of man. What does it say in the book of Revelation, in the 19th chapter? When He comes, the first thing He does is take the man, the antichrist and slay him with the sword that proceeds out of His mouth. Does that sound like three weeks later? Six months later? Give a little, take a little? I am so sick of that kind of terminology. You would never learn anything from that kind of talk. I wish I could have learned arithmetic like that when I went to school. Any answer would have gotten an A. Right? I am not being stupid, but we do have a generation of people that have lost their way through this world. We think our modern conveniences are the answer to the world’s problems. No. We have forgotten God’s ways. The dollar has become our god. That is why it says in the book of Revelation, And they still repented not of their idolatry, the worshiping of gold, silver, and this and that. I say, yes, Go on to school and learn what you can, but do not ever think your learning supercedes God’s knowledge and what is written for our learning. It never will. This is why Peter, still in the year 33 A.D. as he was preaching his second sermon in the temple, could say to those Jews, Thus it is written that of all the things that have been said by the prophets concerning the Christ, God hath so fulfilled. Amen. The first sixty nine weeks of Daniel’s seventy weeks hit exactly as it was written, but do you think the church world of that hour knew it? Or the social world? No. So will it be in our day and hour: Only the bride Church will know what they are looking for. With that in mind, the Grace Age is on, the Church is born, and we begin to travel through time. This is the period that marks the growth of Christianity as it began to spread its wings and go into the various nations. We know, looking at it from calendar time, that from the time Christ was crucified, right here, is where the Roman calendar time has the year 2000 coming in, but we are looking for 2000 years of prophetic time from the crucifixion of Christ, and that brings us on over here another 4 ½ years. Now let us go to Hosea for a look at what he prophesied. Hosea was a prophet that prophesied in 780 B.C. The ten northern tribes had not been taken out of their land at that time. The two southern tribes were still there also, but Hosea is looking down through the span of time to a certain time factor, a time beyond the time when God would have scattered the whole ten tribes among the nations. In 728 the Syrian king came, conquered the ten tribes and took them off into captivity. You read in the 1st chapter of Hosea that the ten tribes were never to return for the first advent of Christ, but only in the later days, for the second advent of Christ. They were to remain in captivity, scattered and dispersed. From then on it was the two southern tribes. Therefore Hosea 6 is a prophecy that covers beyond this period (when the two tribes returned) and goes down to this period, to be in the land when the two prophetic days are fulfilled. As I have said before, Somewhere a few years back, just after the break of the century, the Zionist movement started. (I learned some of what I am telling from a Jewish rabbi in Jerusalem, in 1968. This was after the Six Day War. I began to ask him, Can you tell me what caused the Jews to begin to realize that they should go home. He reminded me of this prophecy in Hosea. Then he reminded me of what started the Zionist movement, so let us read the prophecy. The Holy Spirit is the author of all of this. As he looked through his prophet’s eyes, the Holy Spirit could look down into the twentieth century A.D., and pinpoint the time for the fulfillment of that prophecy. The Holy Spirit is therefore interceding on behalf of the Jews who would be living then. They have just come through a terrible holocaust in Europe and their future looked very grim in the natural, but they had a promise in the word of God.

HOLDING ON TO HOSEA’S PROPHECY

Some may hear or read this and say, Did those Jews really know this prophecy in Hosea was for their day and hour. Some of those Rabbis did. Let us read it. (Hosea 6:1) “Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. (2) After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.” The Zionist movement began to take hold of that scripture. This rabbi said that the rabbis with this revelation began to go to places throughout the world where there was a number of Jews residing and announce certain meetings that would be held. They would say to them, Brethren, the time has come that we must get ready to go home. The time has come that we must go back to our homeland and start reclaiming the land. Their idea was, they would go back and slowly buy it up for so many dollars per acre. That is just terminology, but their plan was, that they would buy it gradually back from the Arabs. That is not the way God wanted it though. Nevertheless, in the early years right after the break of the century, many Jews did volunteer under that type of leadership and return there with that type of instructions. The Zionist movement, from the collection of monies, like the Canadian Jews, the United States Jews that had it, would contribute so much of their wealth to this cause. They would go back and buy up vast acreage’s and start a kibbutz settlement. You know what a kibbutz is, a collective farm or settlement in modern Israel where those Jews worked and fought together for what they believed was their rightful inheritance. Well we find some terminology in verse 2, that is a great mystery to some, but to others it is a beautiful revelation. “After two days (This is not two days of calendar time, but rather two days of God’s terminology based on prophetic time.) will He (God) revive us.” That is a finished, fixed analysis of it. That is the answer, after two days He will revive us. Now let us look at it in this light, because we have 2004 ½ right here on our chart, which hits just before the seventieth week of Daniel starts, but we have the two days, or 2000 years of prophetic time climaxing in the same place. That is not a coincidence: If 2000 prophetic years is to take us to the week of Daniel, fulfilling the two prophetic days of Hosea where the revival actually takes place, then you and I know, with the fixed end 2000 right here, we have to take that and work backwards to something. Where will this 2000 years begin? That is the often unanswered question, but it need not be. Looking at history some can say, Well that would begin with the destruction of Jerusalem, which fell in 69 A.D. If you take 69 A.D. as the starting point and put two prophetic days, or two thousand prophetic years on to that, it takes you way over here to 2030 something, which goes beyond the generation that is to witness the climax of Gentile time. If that be a fact, Jesus is not coming for a good while yet. Do you understand why I said that? Because the revival, the refreshing is to come as the two days runs out to its termination. Always remember those measurements and prophecies are like a yardstick. God put them in there for those that will learn and use them properly. If the Jews would have listened to Daniel and used what he said the right way, they should have been able to figure to maybe within a ten year period of time when their Messiah should have been born. They did not do that, so they missed it and crucified the very One they claimed to be looking for. They just simply did not understand His ministry. They called Him a devil instead, and at the end yelled, Crucify Him! Set Barabbas free. The church world in general will not understand a thing that is going on in this hour of time either, and their error will be just as great. I am not talking about individual Christians that love the revelation of God’s word: I am talking about those who thrive on excitement and have no love for the truth. God has a way of dealing with the individual that has a heart tender enough to deal with, but the masses just have to go their own way. The masses will still be in darkness, totally ignorant of what is going on, when the little bride Church is being perfected, just like Judaism was when true believers were following Jesus. This is the point, The crucifixion of Christ occurred exactly at the time when the first 69 weeks of Daniel’s prophecy ended, which was 483 total prophetic years from the time it went into effect to the time Christ ascended into heaven, Where He will remain until the grace age terminates. Because the Jews rejected their Christ, failing to recognize Him, God reckons this time factor to them, which eventually set them on their course of dispersion again. That is why, when the year 69 A.D. came, here came the Roman army, the people of the prince that shall come, soldiers with Roman authority. They were the ones in the last part of the verse we read part of. (Daniel 9:26) “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” It was Roman soldiers that destroyed the city and the sanctuary, so it will be a prince of the Romans that will fulfill verse 27, which will also be known as the antichrist. (27) And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” You can see why some people would want to figure the two prophet days from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, but when you know the time the 69 weeks ended, you know it cannot be figured from any other standpoint. In other words, where that first 69 weeks was fulfilled, and we know where it was fulfilled because of Daniel 9:26, so that is where the two days had to start. It is the rejection of the Messiah and Him being cut off, that causes this to go into effect. In 69 A.D., the nation was again scattered into captivity and dispersion, but that is not where the two days started. They have suffered, been tossed from nation to nation all over the world ever since, until we come into the twentieth century. The first verse we read there in Hosea, is when they begin to say, “Come, and let us return unto the Lord.” When we come to around 1900, we find that is when the Jews began to get this feeling. WE come through the 1930’s, and the war of Europe. That is what put the pressure on the Jews to start fulfilling this prophecy; they just needed some place to call home after six million of them had been butchered, all their wealth confiscated, along with their property, and they were detained in concentration camps waiting to see what their end would be. When the United Nations was formed in New York City, on the night of May 8, 1948, they had already been in a squabble as to what to do with those people called Jews. Therefore on that night, the night of the 8th of May, the U.N. General Assembly was brought to a vote, and it was President Truman who led the vote, saying, Let us get them a petition of land in the land of Palestine. That set the whole thing in motion and the Jews began to make their way back to the land of their forefathers. Now, after that little explanation I want to say, As we read here in Hosea, that after two days HE will revive us, the two full days bring us to 2004 ½ by the calendar. This is calendar time here on this top line, but this is prophetic time here on the bottom line, so I hope you can understand why we have it drawn out like this after hearing it explained. Therefore with all other things taken into consideration, the two prophetic days had to start in 33 A.D., when Jesus was crucified. The reason is, that is the span of time that goes between the ending of the 69 weeks and the beginning of the 70th week. Remember though, when I say 2004 ½ calendar time, is where the two days end, that is all depending on whether our Roman Calendar time is correct. We realize man has calculated backward from certain points and put this calendar together; therefore there could be as much as six months, or even a year to a year and a half miscalculation. That is why I say, do not let yourself try to pin it exactly to that point. We are saying this, hoping that what we see clearly is going to show us just how close we are to the coming of Jesus Christ for His bride Church. According to Paul’s revelation in 1st Thessalonians, there is to be a rapture of the true Church as the time comes for God to turn His attention back to the Jews, to reveal the gospel of Jesus Christ to them. Somewhere in this little space of time, as the world gets ready to initiate the seventieth week, which is the last seven years of time altogether, it is time for the bride to go up. Christ will come physically, with all His Bride saints, as well as with all His saints, at the end of this last week of years. It is His literal coming that destroys the beast, and the antichrist, and brings an end to the world’s wickedness. He is ready to set up His Millennial reign. We have given full details of all of this in other messages, so we will not try to cover every detail at this time, but let all understand this, No matter what your professors want to say, the visible, bodily return of Christ to this earth is not going to come until all of the Bible prophecies fall in continuity with the entire book. It did the first time Jesus came, so it will the second time also. The rapture takes place upon His secret appearing for His bride, but no carnal eye will see Him then. That is what Jesus was referring to when He said, No man knows the day or hour. That is this part right there, but if we live and walk with God, and we can understand the things that must be understood from the natural viewpoint, we should be able to tell within a year’s time, when all of this should take place. That is not being foolish: it is just being wise and simple. I would never try to figure this all the way down and say He is coming October 7, at the hour of 11:15 A.M. That would be sheer nonsense. He wants to leave you a little guesswork after allowing you to know a certain time frame for His return. If He told us HE was coming at a precise hour and day, half of you, six months before that date, would stop work, withdraw your savings and sit back and be like a bullfrog. Why do I say it that way? So you will get the point. You do not need to know the day nor hour of His return: You just need to be ready for it. ON the other hand, if you know the year that He should return, it is going to make you keep your clothes clean and cause you to go to bed looking right. Look at it in this light, If we knew the very hour and moment he is coming, some would not even go to bed at night. What does it say in Matthew? Two shall be lying in the bed, one will be taken and the other left. Some would not even go to work anymore. No, I have enough to take care of me until Jesus comes. But since we do not know the day or hour, we are going to keep our jobs, and as Bro. Branham said, Go on and plant potatoes, cut the wheat, feed the hogs, gather the eggs, because you do not know what day or hour He is coming. How many understand what I meant? O.K. That is the important thing.

CAN WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE?

I am aware that a lot of people have difficulty in knowing how to correlate time, especially when you are talking about A.D. and B.C. time. Well we have this chart up here that will help make some of what we say a little clearer. We will show you two examples of how some of the older histories in years gone by have been written. IN some of the older ones, you will read it like this, because the writer of that history is not necessarily keeping his writings with the thought in mind that it starts form the birth of Christ to what he is saying: He is correlating strictly from the death of King Herod, just continuing right on. He might mention an event, like, we will say 28 A.D., but 28 A.D., if you were to correlate that actually with the birth of Christ, it might actually be 31 A.D., because, as we said, Jesus was actually born more than two years before the death of King Herod. Do you understand what I am saying? I am not that smart, but I did realize, that if I was going to teach the seventy weeks of Daniel, and try to figure it out, we would have to use the weeks of Daniel as a yardstick to find out where we are. First off, what histories say, is what is written in the light of calendar time, which is 365 1/4 days to a year, but the weeks of Daniel are figured in prophetic time, which is 360 days to a year. Therefore you have got to break the calendar time down and parallel it with prophetic time, and the best way to do that is to take the starting of that decree, which was 445 B.C. according to calendar time. First, there was seven weeks, which is 49 years. Then there was to be 62 weeks that would run right on through to the crucifixion of Christ. Those weeks of years are prophetic years of 360 days to the year and they started in 445 B.C. calendar time, so that is where you start. Now, to get the accuracy of it, you multiply this 69 weeks of 7 years each, times 360 days to a year, to get the total number of days of prophetic time that expired at the crucifixion of Jesus. Then you convert those days into calendar time and you get the total number of Roman Calendar years that expired at the crucifixion of Jesus. In other words, you will see how many prophetic days went from this point to that point. When we come to the seventieth week, that is why I said, This is accurate. The Bible says it is, right to the day. The seventieth week starts with the two prophets coming on the scene (Revelation 11). How long do they prophesy? A thousand two hundred and threescore days, which is exactly half of the 2520 days incorporated in the total week. See, it puts it in days: That gives you accuracy. How long then does the antichrist rule when he comes into the temple? It says he will rule forty and two months. What is forty two months? Again, it is a thousand two hundred and threescore days, (1260 days). When you add both of these together, you have the total of what a thousand two hundred and threescore twice, added together, comes to. It makes it two thousand, five hundred and twenty days. When you read the 12th chapter of Daniel, it says blessed is he that cometh to the thousand and so many days. Well it looks like there is a discrepancy with the closing of this period, and that which we see there. I have it marked in my Bible, and I have concluded that these extra days have to cover the time that the earth is hanging here, after having been hit with the catastrophic wrath of God. It says, Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to such and such a time. That goes to show, that from a certain point on, Christ will begin the process of setting up, or establishing a righteous government that will actually rise up right where this rubbish and chaos has hit the earth, so we can rest assured that the whole mess will have to be cleaned up. None of these extra days mentioned by Daniel should be construed in any way as affecting the two periods of 360 days each. Both of those periods are going to be precise. The extra 30 days, as well as the extra 45 days, regardless of what those days are dedicated to, are also precise. There is no room for variableness concerning any of these specified days. When Jesus sets up this kingdom on earth, it will last for one thousand years, exactly. God is specific on those things. While we are thinking on these things, let me say a little something about this Millennium thing we are hearing so much about in these days. Every time you turn on the television you hear, the millennium, the millennium, the millennium. Well saints, the next millennium has not started yet. This present thousand years, this millennium we are already in, is not over until 1999 closes completely out. Then, by your Roman calendar, the world will be in another millennium, but that is not to say that this is the exact time Jesus will set up His thousand year rule. God has His own calendar and it is not based upon 365 1/4 days to the year. I wished I could borrow money and pay it back on the basis that so many people are harping on right now. Well, what I am saying is, We have to be all the way through 1999 before this present millennium is finished. When your calendar rolls from 1999, over to 2000, then this past millennium, and the twentieth century is over. I want all of you to understand that. You have a lot of philosophers and that type of fellows that want to figure the coming of Christ by just throwing out jabs about the new millennium. All of that is very confusing to a lot of people, so that is why we started this message. The Bible does not teach any such stuff as we hear from those fellows, but God allows them to do that, simply because their teaching binds up those who have no love for the truth. On the other hand, God gives His true children wisdom that enables them to read the scriptures the right way. You do not just hit and miss, hit and miss, hit and miss concerning those very specific prophecies. They are every one written for the children of wisdom, those who have God’s wisdom to understand, when the time is right that they should be understood. All of that being true, I will ask you to open your Bible’s to Zechariah. The 10th chapter of Zechariah gives us a description of one of the major things that will take place in the end time, somewhere along in here, before we even near the year 2000. This is why we go back to the era of WW2. The war years started in 1939. It continued through 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944. Those years shook the entire earth, because it was a war that killed more men than all other wars leading up to that one. Our country alone put 14 million men in the military. Counting both the allies and the enemy, it was many hundreds of millions of people. I used to know the figure, but I will not even try to remember it now. However when we think of a war in Armageddon fashion, as stated in the 16th chapter of Revelation, I believe it speaks of an army of 200 million, which pertains to both the enemy and the allied forces, however it is lined up in that hour. That is a lot of men. We say men out of habit, because of former times, but today they have both men and women in those military endeavors. Nevertheless this Armageddon thing is going to be a war that will slay a lot of people. Let me drop this point in also. There are preachers in various places, which are teaching that Ezekiel 38, is the beginning of Armageddon. (I have a tape that was just sent to me on that.) If you study that chapter very carefully, the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, all the Jews that are to be in the land at the end time are still in the land dwelling peacefully right up to the time when the Ezekiel 38 war is fought, but when Armageddon is fought the spiritual Jews, those that are to be redeemed in the first half of this week, will have already fled into the wilderness getting away from the antichrist forces. Therefore when Armageddon is fought, only the unbelieving Jews are still in the land. Ezekiel 38 is a miracle war that God sovereignly brings to its conclusion. In fact it is the last miracle episode of any kind that takes place just before the week of Daniel starts. Armageddon will not be a miracle war. It is a war of devastation. It will be fought in the valley of Megiddo, the valley that leads from the coast of Haifa inland, through the Jezreel valley, to the headwaters of the Jordan. It says in the Bible, that the blood shall flow to the bridle’s of the horses. When you begin to study these scriptures, you have to see how the things stack up. Ezekiel 38, is not what triggers Armageddon. It is a war designed by the Communist and Moslem world that aligns with Russia for that one specified hour of time. It is a conflict that will only last for just a few short hours, and then and God’s own miraculous power devastates the thing. That is why it says in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and Israel shall know from that day and onward that I am the Lord thy God that is in their midst forevermore. It will bring on such devastation that He (God) gives those people a cemetery somewhere mysteriously in the land of Israel. Israel will be seven months burying the dead. Then, when Armageddon is fought, you do not even read where they bury the dead. IT says their dead bodies shall lie from one end of the earth to the other. I believe it is in Isaiah that says they shall become as dung over the face of the earth. Meaning this, the devastation of Armageddon and the coming of the Lord and His smiting the nations with the sword that goes out of His mouth, is so devastating there is no going to be many people, mortal flesh left to even bury the dead. Chaos will reign everywhere, so let us look at this then. We know that the Bible speaks specifically, that immediately after the tribulation of those days, that is the last half of this period of time, shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall withdraw its light and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, then shall appear the sign of the coming of the Son of man in power and great glory. The stars will fall from heaven and heaven will be opened. That is why the people of the earth that are still alive will see the coming of the Lord in that visible bodily return. That is not the rapture though. The rapture does not take place there: it has already taken place. Nevertheless you have men that have already written their version of the events that are to take place. They say it is unscriptural for the rapture to take place before the great tribulation. That is because they do not know how to read Revelation 7:9-14. They see the bride Church still here then. “After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; (10) And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. (11) And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God, (12) Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. (13) And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? And whence came they? (14) And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” That is definitely not the bride in that setting. That group consists of foolish virgins and Jews that had to suffer martyrdom during the tribulation, rather than bow to the dictates of the antichrist forces. When you carefully read what Paul write in 2nd Thessalonians, he plainly tells you, even though he does not give you a day nor an hour, he does mark an era when our gathering together unto Him should occur. He says, Brethren, concerning the coming of the Lord, (not His visible coming, but His mystical coming for the bride Church) and our (the believers) gathering together unto Him. That is not over here. That is right here. (pointing to chart at the beginning of the week of Daniel) That day shall not come except there be a falling away first. Well we have seen the falling away, way back in here, but it is leading into total apostasy by the time the world is entering into this era of time. That is why the religious world today does not even know how to look at time, nor how to even read the Bible. They jump at the predictions of philosophers. They will take Nostradamus and put more dependence in what he said than they will in what the Bible says. So will all the others that are not walking in this revelation of truth. They will jump at this soothsayer or that soothsayer or what have you. I grant you, that some seers were for an era of time, but they were not seers to establish Bible prophecy. They were seers that God allowed to be on hand to relate to other situations within their period of time. There was one that prophesied, that by the year 2000 the northwest coast of Europe would go into the sea. Well we have a chance to see whether he will hit it right or not, but I assure you, we are not looking to any such as that for our information to follow the Spirit of God by. As for the rapture of the Church, it will take place somewhere either right before, or right after the week of Daniel starts. As Paul said, the falling away comes first and the man of sin is to be revealed. That is why I have said, as long as we are living in this era of time, moving toward the year 2000, we are not expecting a rapture to take place just any moment. Neither are we, as we turn the corner and start for that four and one half years, that leads to the week, because I believe what Paul said, the man of sin shall be revealed, the son of perdition, and he is the character that the world will cause to introduce and set in motion this week of time we are talking about. God Himself is the time keeper, but every instrument mentioned in the Bible will have its job to do. It is very evident then, that we will see that man of sin, the world’s antichrist, introduced by the world political system and brought on the scene, and then, and not before then cane the bride expect to be taken up from here. I am fully persuaded though, that the bride Church will not have to go through any part of the great tribulation which will take place in the last 3 ½ years of that seven year period that is still allotted to God’s dealing with the Jews. Did not the apostle Paul write, in 1st Thessalonians 5:9, “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ?” If the bride was to be left here to go through the great tribulation, that scripture could not be true. That scripture was not written for any except the bride. Some, because of traditional teaching, have thought just the opposite of those we have mentioned. They will say, Well I thought we were going to be raptured out of here before the antichrist comes on the scene. No. That has all been speculation. When we think like that, we get completely out of the confines of scriptures. But I want to get out of here before then! Saints, we only have one sure thing, one thing we can count on, and that is to depend completely upon what is written in the scriptures. Can you go to the Airport over in Louisville, stand there wring your hands and scream at the officials, I want to get out of here right now, and get out on a scheduled flight one minute sooner because of it? They will say to you, Either sit down and shut up, or get out of the airport. That is just to say this, None of our anxieties will ever hurry the plan of God one bit. We only frustrate our mind if we think so. Secretly, you can sit around with friends that have confidence in you because of the way you talk, and you can persuade a lot of them to believe in what you are promoting, but when the point in time comes for that even to take place, that is when the chips are down: Either you are vindicated, or your idea is cast into the wind. Therefore when the apostle Paul said this in 2nd Thessalonians 2:1-3, that our gathering together unto the Lord will not come until the man of sin be revealed first, that is exactly what he meant. Let us read it. “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, (the rapture) (2) That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. (3) Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” The rapture will not come until after that man of sin is revealed to the world. That is what marks the starting point for the last week of Daniel, the time when that man of sin is revealed to the world. From then on, we are in an era of time when we had better be sure we have our house set in order. When we enter that era of time, we will have already had the 7th seal and the seven thunders. How many understand me now? That should set our minds at ease and acquaint us with how to look at this interval of time as it is introduced. We should have our house set in order by then, because from that point on no man knows the day or hour when the Lord will come. You do definitely know by then that it is close. That is why it all figures out like that. He never did want us to know the day or time of day that it would take place. Like I said earlier, If we knew the day and the very hour that He is coming, there would be some of you that would quit work. You would say you had enough money in the bank to keep you until then, providing inflation doesn’t get higher, or house rent go up. I tell you, If you begin to sit down and try to take life easy and coast along until you come to that day, you just might run out of money altogether. Then you would want the rest of the believers that have been working all along to help you out. They are going to have to say, Look, you are the one in error, not us. You better go find another job. Seriously, we should keep up with all of our responsibilities until the very hour comes.

HOW CERTAIN EVENTS ACTUALLY TRANSPIRED

When you go to Zechariah 10, it gives us a picture to look at. As we came to the time of WW2, the world was just coasting along in time. The histories we had then, spoke of a nation that at one time existed, by the name of Israel. It spoke of how those people were scattered from the year 69-70 A.D., but the fact that we had come almost 2000 years from the destruction of that hour, a lot of our histories had just about left off completely in giving any details. Little did the world realize what was getting ready to take place. The world was forced into a conflict and a mad man in Europe began to kill. He specifically had in mind the extermination of all Jewish people. I am going to say this for the sake of the Jews that might hear this. Some of the writers from among the orthodox Jews, about the turn of the century, began to speculate and calculate how they might be able to bring about an era through their own social, political, and economic maneuvers that would create a condition where they could begin to buy back the Holy Land a little at a time, and as we mentioned already, that is exactly what they began to do. You have heard of the kibbutz we mentioned earlier. They were a result of those efforts. They did not just start at the close of WW2 as some suppose. Back about the turn of the century, there were a few immigrant Jews from the region of eastern Europe and southern Russia that made their way back. You have heard of the Rothschild’s: I believe it was two brothers: They practically walked out of eastern Europe by night, and slept in the daytime. They spent months and months, traveling from Jewish community to Jewish community as they made their way to that land called Palestine, where it was basically owned by Arabs. Slowly God allowed those men to begin to put together some workable ideas. In a short time, they were acquiring certain acreage and planting them in grapes. From the grapes they began to produce wine. They built camps for immigrant Jews to go to. Today the Rothschild’s have made millions starting from that period of time. That is only one little story, but there were many. From all over certain areas of the land of Palestine, immigrant Jews began to come. A lot of the Arabs began to get nervous. They were friendly at first, because they did not look upon the Jews as being a mass of people. It was different with Hitler; He looked upon the Jew, especially in Europe, and he saw the Jews as posing a problem. In the 1930’s they owned the financial institutions, the banks and many of the industries. When you go into certain cities of the United States, on certain streets, all the department stores are owned by Jews. From one end to the other, it was like that. In these other countries they had never learned the technique of farming, but as soon as they go back to the land of their heritage, something falls upon them and they began to remember how they saw farming done in the country they came from. They had not forgot what they saw and how it was done in Canada. They had not forgot what they saw and how it was done in France, or Germany, or wherever they immigrated from. They always wound up settling in those kibbutz, setting up a communal lifestyle. By the time we come to the later part of 1938 going into 1939, this made man Hitler had devised a plot. He had got to thinking, If those Jews are not exterminated, the day will come that they will own the wealth of the world. With that frame of mind he started working on a plan. The war is in the making. It was not until we come to the year 1945 that the war finally comes to a close. In that five years more or less, six million Jews had been slaughtered in various ways. Some were skinned, and their blood drained from them. The skin was made into lamp shades. The Germans boasted of what they would do to those Jewish people. When the war was over, there were still hundreds that had escaped the death chambers, because the Allied armies had moved in rapidly and prevented some of what would have been done. We had a brother here; Bro. Jeffries, who has passed on now to his reward, but his outfit was one that broke through the lines and made it through to the gates. He showed us pictures of those Jews, how they stood looking through the wire fences. When their outfit circled this big camp, he said, GI’s that had killed Germans before, when they looked and saw those Jews standing there at those fences, so poor they could hardly stand up, begging for something to eat, the GI’s would go to their jeeps, get boxes of rations and pitch them over the fence to them. He said many GI’s stood their crying because of what they were seeing. We have people in this nation today, who will stand up and tell you that was all a lie about so many Jews being slaughtered and starved. I have read their articles. They ought to have been there themselves. When that war was over, the United Nations began to say, What will we do with these people called Jews? Because of that, in May 1948, the U.N. General Assembly held a vote on it. President Truman led the way and they made a decision to petition some land in Palestine that they could be sent to. That was where most of the Jews, from back in the beginning of the century had migrated to, and most of them had settled in the various areas. No sooner do they begin to arrive there, the Arabs set up against them. Immediately, there was a war (in 1948). Then another one in 1953. Every few months fresh uprisings would be started. It went on like that until 1967. Then the 1967 war that we have heard so much about was the first great victory that the immigrant Jews which had gone back there and helped to establish the national name of Israel, had attained. That is why I am reading this chapter. This was the beginning of how the chronology of prophecy began to fall in line. NO matter how you want to look at it, you cannot break the chronological order of this chain of prophecies. I am reading from the 10th chapter of Zechariah, in verse 1. This gives you a picture of that lone tribe that was treated so rough in eastern Europe. It was basically the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. “Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain; so the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.” This is speaking of the future revival that will take place right here, (pointing to the first 3 ½ years of the week of Daniel on the chart.) Prophecy many times is worded in so many misunderstood ways. Why did they put this first? Why did they not put it last? That is God’s business, how He chooses to do things. One thing is sure, it throws all of the doctors of divinity for a loop. “For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd. Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, (He is talking about the ones in ancient times.) and I punished the goats: for the Lord of hosts hath visited His flock (Now he brings it into the beginning of the era) the house of Judah, and hath made them as His goodly horse in the battle.” Imagine the Jews being brought out of Europe all through 1947, 1948, 1949, and 1950, and when they come to the later part of the 1950’s conflict after conflict with the Arabs had kept them constantly on guard. I have read the book titled “The Exodus.” It tells of the conflicts the Jews were faced with. They were basically of the tribe of Judah, out of the European concentration camps, and how they many times, had to fight the Arabs with obsolete weapons that were of home made origin. It was startling, because the world did not want ti give the Jews what they really needed to defend their existence. Nevertheless God was with them. They managed to put together obsolete things that were sufficient for the time. Even when you go there, and the guides take you to some of the kibbutz that are still there, they tell how that even their children learned how to fight. If you go to one kibbutz, I have forgotten the name of it, they will take you to the spot where a Jewish girl took a Molotov cocktail bomb, which is a homemade contraption and hid in a fox hole with it until the right moment. As this Arab tank broke through the fence and passed over the fox hole, she came out and climbed on top of it, and broke that thing over the tank. Naturally that gas drained through all the cracks and crevices, set the tank on fire inside, and the occupants were burned alive. That is bravery. It is a shame our modern world today has to look upon the existence of the Jewish state with such misgivings. I think it was in the last year we were there, I believe it was in 1979, our guide told us that in 1973, the Syrians came through the grain fields to attack Israel by surprise. It was when the 1973 war was fought. The Syrians came through the grain fields with tanks, with gasoline cans hanging on the sides. The Jews looked at that as they were fighting them. They said, we are going to lose the grain anyhow, so let us set the fields on fire. They knew if they set the grain fields on fire, those gasoline cans hanging there would catch fire. The Arabs in those tanks soon woke up to what they were driving into, so they turned and fled. Another column of Syrians had already crossed and was coming southward on the roads heading toward Tiberias and in through there, and were without any opposition. All of a sudden the commander of the Syrian column said, Stop, we are driving into a trap, simply because they had met no opposition. To the surprise of the Jews, the Syrians turned and went back home. I say those things to give recognition to the Jews, to their intelligence, and to their bravery. They do not fight like the Gentiles do. They are totally dependant upon God to help them. Sometimes it is not because they have said God help us, it is because God is fighting with them and for them, and He drops a thought into their mind and they take that thought and use it to their advantage. It looks foolish to everyone else, but they carry it out anyhow. Yes, from 1948 until 1967, there had been many conflicts, and the Jews suffered great losses, especially in material wealth. However, by the time 1967 came, they had been able to buy planes of the modern structure of that hour. That is when the tide was turned. Let us read verse 4, now. “Out of him came forth the corner, out of him the nail, out of him the battle bow, out of him every oppressor together.” Meaning every ruler, all true leadership, so that 4th verse describes to you, that if there is anything that Israel as a whole nation is to benefit by, it will come about when Judah is doing the right thing. Why? Jesus is referred to as the Lion of the tribe of Judah in Rev. 5:5. That has always been the militant tribe. That is why it says in the 3rd verse how God hath made Judah as His goodly horse in the battle. We could talk about modern warfare, which is mechanized. Mechanized equipment cannot think for itself, but when you look back to ancient times, back when men fought on horseback, especially in the cavalry, it was not every horse that made a good horse in the conflict. Some got scared. Some ran away. The rider could not control that kind. On the other hand, a horse that would keep his cool, as the old saying goes, and trust his rider, many times it was the intelligence of the horse, that put the man, the rider, in the right position, a position where he had supremacy over his opponent. Years ago, I used to subscribe to a horse magazine. There was one writer that had gone to the annals of England. He told about an incident with horses, with an artillery gun, and just a few men. As they got to a certain place where the foliage and leaves of the trees were thick, they were in the open roadway. The enemy was in the bushes on each side. They opened fire on them. The soldiers began to drop to the bushes. They left the horses. They left the wagon and artillery piece, but the one horse had been under fire before, so he did a great thing. When the men began to leave the road and go into the bushes, they had a high bank to climb. The article said that horse that was pulling the gun, just leaped up that bank and pulled that gun to safety. Then the British soldiers set the gun up and had something to win the skirmish with. That is what you call a goodly horse in battle. He does not lose his cool in a tight place. That is why this scripture was worded like this; because Judah, when she is under oppression and falls as a target of the enemy, God puts courage in her and she binds together and moves along and God gives victory. These are the things that God began to use in the tribe of Judah, to accomplish certain things through those early war years. “And they shall be as mighty men, which tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle: and they shall fight, because the Lord is with them, and the riders on horses shall be confounded.” That means the enemy will be confounded. Keep in mind, men do not ride horses in those battles any more: They use horsepower. When you are riding mechanized equipment, you know the brains of that thing, whatever it is, has to be the man that sits at the controls. That is why, from the 1967 war to the 1973 war, things changed greatly. Look what they did in Lebanon in 1982. If they would have left Israel alone in 1982 when she went into Lebanon, in all probability there would not be the division of conflict in Israel that there is today. The world powers would not leave them alone, so you see how everything stands in this hour. Notice what the 6th verse tells us right here. “And I will strengthen the house of Judah, (He has done that since the 1967 war, and she has had more than thirty years wherein God has equipped her (Judah) with some of the best aircraft in the world. She has produced one of the main battle tanks for the Middle East desert warfare) and I wills ave the house of Joseph, (This means the other ten tribes, because the house of Joseph is pointing to the ten tribes that are known like that, which from ancient times have been scattered here and there in dispersion; in Russia and all the Slavic states. Basically, that is what we find when the Russian Communist regime broke up. There began to be a great wave of Jews leave Russia, because that was God’s way of giving an open door to many of the Jews of the ten tribes that had been in Russia. For all practical purposes we can call it Joseph.) and I will bring them again to place them; for I have mercy upon them: and they shall be as though I had not cast them off: for I am the Lord their God, and will hear them. And they of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, (That will be right at the very last, and this is what I want us to look at, somewhere as we near the year 2000, and we see the condition as it is existing right now between the Arabs and the Jews. The Arabs are saying we want a state, and Jerusalem will be the capital. The Jews just look at them and say, Never will we give up Jerusalem. Nevertheless it has not yet reached that diplomatic table. That is only say-so. This is why we have to understand, that we are moving very rapidly in time toward a very sensitive time factor. The world cannot stand back any longer and just negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, because prophecy would actually have to stand still. With the Palestinians thinking like they do, demanding statehood, and then demanding Jerusalem be given over to them as their Capital, if that was to be allowed, prophecy would begin to go in reverse. It would be just the opposite of what the scriptures bring out as being just in the near future. Well just as sure as the Arabs begin to demand that, it will be the very thing that will take us out of this verse. Let me finish the verse.) and their heart shall rejoice as through wine: yea, their children shall see it, and be glad; their heart shall rejoice in the Lord. I will hiss for them, and gather them; for I have redeemed them: and they shall increase as they have increased.” That is where He speaks of the whole thing, the final picture in the end time. But when we take this, and go to Micah we get the picture. Let us go there. The Six Day War did set in motion the fulfillment of that 10th chapter, because as Judah was made to be like a goodly horse in the battle, that is why in six days time that tribe of Judah mopped up the Syrian army, mopped up the Egyptian army, and absolutely did away with the Jordanian army that controlled Jerusalem. In six days time she took all that land right on over to the Red Sea. A lot of the people in the world rejoiced. A lot of Jews rejoiced. A lot of Jews began to relate to reality: O Jehovah fought for us. I remember, when we were building this platform right here, during that 1967 war, how Bro. Mayfield sat right there with that little radio going full time. Once in awhile they would break in on the news to give a last minute report of what was going on in Israel. After the war was brought to an end, they began to quote on the news what this general, what this admiral, what statement would be made by certain officials. From England and the States, military men that knew what it was to fight in a war where they were outnumbered, or the equipment is far superior, these men began to say, It had to be a miracle from God. More than one of those military men back then were not afraid to say it. They would say, It had to be a miracle from God, because the statistics showed the Arab world outnumbered them, man for man, plane for plane, tank for tank. There was no way, from the standpoint of logic that Israel could have won that war, but in just six days time she had defeated her enemies and drove her foes from their land all the way to the Red Sea. The Egyptians were seen heading back toward Cairo. That lets you know God was fighting with Judah, because Judah kept the courage and she had sense enough to know what to do. God was recognized in it for a while, but a year later they had stopped talking about the goodness of God and were back to business as usual. That is just like the Gentiles were, in the Gulf War. At first they gave God credit for their swift victory with so few casualties, but after so long a time, they seem to forget that and begin to believe our superior weaponry is what should get the credit. None of the opinions of carnal mankind will ever change the prophesied plan of God. IT just simply cannot be so. Thirty years ago God blessed Judah. She took the initiative; She took the leadership; and she began to have a vision of the growth of the nation. She said, Never, will we give up Jerusalem again. When the troops stood at the wailing wall with their rifles in the air, down came the flag of Jordan, up went the Star of David. For the first time in almost 2500 years, Jerusalem was free of a foreign flag flying above the Star of David. They left it that way until the United Nations began to get into the picture again. Then, along with our president and certain U.N. officials, the world began to say, We cannot allow Israel to become greater Israel. We do not want her to return to her ancient biblical proportions. We want her to abide by the dictates of the U.N. We are going to put the Jews and Arabs all in the same little cubbyhole. That is what their aim is. That is why God is letting you and me take a look at this. Let us not go to sleep on the world picture. We are looking at something here, and it is true that you and I cannot set the time factor. We cannot dictate the terms. The U.N. may try to, and it may seem like they are getting their way, but just wait a little while longer and see who does what. Up until now, Clinton has tried his best do dictate to Netanyahu. He is not a man that believes in the supernatural: He is just a Jew that believes in being a Jew, and for now, that is sufficient. He believes that the land of Israel should belong to the Jews, but that is not because he is looking at prophecies in the Bible: He makes no such gestures. He just does not believes in the prophetic picture the Bible portrays. That is bad, but that will not stop God from fulfilling those prophecies. He can work circumstances that will put every Jew in the right place at the right time. I read an article several years ago, of what men in that hour had begun to say. We have had a lot of statesmen in Israel through the years. Some of them were orthodox, but they did not believe it is time for Israel to be what the Bible portrays her to be. Therefore they fall in with the political structure that is interested only in material progress and greatness. I have to say, Why did God bring them back in the first place? I would like to say to some of those Jews in a nice way, You are proud to be a Jew, and you are proud to say you are the seed of Abraham, so why will you not follow Abraham’s example? I am a Gentile: I look into your Bible, and read how God called Abraham from the land of the Chaldeans, (Read it in Genesis.) and started him on his road, and God said to Abraham, In thee and thy seed shall all families of the earth be blessed. That is why I am talking about God, Jesus Christ, and the Jewish nation like I am today. It is from your Bible, that we know what God is moving your nation and the world at large toward. You gave us Gentiles the knowledge of something that is precious to those who believe what is written in that book. Now you are willing to trade off part of what God has given to you. You want the land back, so you can speculate and make money, but you have no interest in the plan of God that gave that land back to you, and that stands ready to give you the rest of what is rightly yours. I, as a Gentile, have to say back to you, Friends, wake up! Your unbelieving politicians are leading you down the road of betrayal and slaughter. God did not bring you back just so you could make more money: He brought you back to set in motion the beginning of a picture that is in your Bible, what HE would do in the latter day. Now I have to say to you, After fifty years of statehood, please turn to your prophet Micah and study what he wrote. Many of your statesmen can say, Well we do not know that it is time for that. Well, that is the sad part of what is ahead: Many of you will never know what hour you are living in until you have been half blown to pieces. In the 11th verse of the 7th chapter of Micah, God’s word says this, “In the day that thy walls are to be built, (What walls is He talking about? He is talking about the walls of the old city and the temple. They are all compounded together.) in that day shall the decree be far removed.” You will find that decree in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. There, God plainly told Israel by the mouthpiece of Moses, what He would do to the nation, once HE has led them into the land. He would give them the great opportunity in the land that flows with milk and honey. If you turn your back on me, and you will no longer observe my word and keep my statutes and judgments, God said, I will turn my back on you. Read it. Then He said, I will scatter you to the ends of the earth. There among the nations you will become an infamy, a nickname, or as the Dictionary says, of Evil fame or reputation. Have you ever heard the term when two businessmen get together and say, Will you Jew on that? How much will you Jew on that? Say that in front of a Jew and you offend him, but actually, that is the way the Jews deal. My father-in-law and I, over here on Market Street years ago, and I do not remember the name of the Jewish people that used to run a place of business where you could sell sheep wool, roots, and all that type of thing. My father-in-law and I would shear our sheep: Then we went over there early one Monday morning to sell our wool. We got in there and these two Jews were into a big argument. I never heard such carrying on between two Jews. They were looking at each other like they wanted to shoot each other. However when they saw my father-in-law and me walk in they stopped their argument and loud talk and said, Gentlemen, what can we do for you? They changed gear just that suddenly. We said, We have some wool out here to sell. They grabbed a cart and here we went, but that is just the way those people are. They are Jews. One minute they are fighting; the next minute they have their head’s together deciding how they can take you for every penny you are worth. God has allowed them to be that way. I am not belittling them, I am just speaking the truth about the way they are. My point in saying this is, It is sad to say but true, that thousands of those Jews know they are the seed of Abraham, and they have a vague knowledge of God Jehovah, but no reality. They know this book is their Bible, but their knowledge is so far from reality they do not even know how to look at it. That is why they will read the first five books, which basically, is just history, except for the 24th chapter of Numbers. They will talk about reading the Torah. We are loyal to the Torah, they will say. Well that is just like a lot of Americans: They will quote the Constitution, yet turn right around and amend it every time it conflicts with something they want to do. They want to amend this, amend that, and they do it. Then when someone mentions something that is written they will say, Well, that is not what was meant. The point here in these scriptures is, This is a prophecy that has been laying here in the Bible for centuries, and I have to say, A lot of Christian preachers have just read it and said, Well I do not know for sure, if that is relative to our day. Shame on you. Let me ask you saints, What walls is this prophecy speaking of? That lets us know, that in the mind of God, He had a precise time set that the walls of Jerusalem is going to be rebuilt. For what reason? To give somebody a job of work? No. God is getting ready to change the order of conditions on the earth, because He is soon going to send the Messiah that is going to sit in that temple and rule and reign from the city of Jerusalem for one thousand years. “And the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem in that day. All nations, (yes, all nations) shall go to Zion and Jerusalem to worship the Lord of hosts.“ That is when the Jewish Messiah sits in the temple, but right here in this next verse is what we Gentiles have got to look for, because that lets us know our time is getting very close. When that time factor has come, and I have to believe we are approaching it, not in a period of days, but we can say this, We are approaching in a period of months, the time for it to take place. Let us just watch the Middle East and be careful to remember these prophecies. “In that day also he shall come even to thee from Assyria, and from the fortified cities, and from the fortress even to the river, and from sea to sea, (meaning every Jew that is still out there lingering somewhere, but waiting for some kind of sign, when the time comes for this to be fulfilled, God will begin to speak to them and they will come from the different areas of this world to fulfill the word of God,) and from mountain to mountain.” Verse 13 gives you a description of how the Arab people have done for the past hundreds and hundreds of years. “Notwithstanding (however) the land shall be desolate because of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.” Bro. Jackson, what does that mean? The Arabs have not been agricultural people. They have been squatters. How many know what I mean by that? They just moved in there and squatted on the land with their herds of sheep and goats. They have let vast acreage grow up in brush. For hundreds of years the Arabs have done exactly that. They basically, are not farmers. They are more or less just goat men. I do not say that in any derogatory way: I am just expressing a fact. If you go there today, every acre you see cabbage grown on, you will see a Jew responsible for it. Every acre you see wheat, oats, or barley growing on, there is a Jew behind all of it. Every acre you see of cultivated grapes, a Jew is behind that. On the other hand, wherever you see uncultivated ground with a goat here and there, if you look closely you will see an Arab sitting in a tent. The reason that verse is there, it is to tell you how the land will look once the time has come for God to start this restoration process, so let us read verse 16, a this time. “According (The word according means, he is going to compare it to something like a statue or image of something.) to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him (the Jew, so I say, Come on Jew, you read the first five books of the Bible, you read the Torah, so I say also to you, Read the book of Exodus very closely. Read also the book of Numbers. See in there, what your God did for your ancient ancestors. To those of you who are living in this present time He has promised the same thing, according, in comparison, will I show unto him, Israel these things.) marvelous things. The nations (the United States, Canada, Europe, the Orient and all) shall see and be confounded (God does not intend to do something just to make Bill Clinton smile.) at all their might: (Think of our highly sophisticated weapons of modern warfare.) they shall lay their head upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf.” That is why I have to say, Right here in front of us, somewhere around the time we begin to break into the year 2000, we are going to see things in the diplomatic, political world begin to crumble. I cannot help but believe our nation is headed for some kind of problem. It is a known fact, we have many foreign troops in our land today, training for something. Why are they here? They are here secretly, because certain big shots who want to fulfill the U.N. agenda and bring this nation under U.N. control, brought these troops in here from Germany, Pakistan as well as others: I could name all of them but it would do no good. There are more Russian troops here than from any other place. They are here because these men that have that kind of twisted brain have the idea that our own troops would not fire on our own people in certain conditions that could arise. Well I pray to the Lord that the troops we do have, have sense enough to know they may be forced to either shoot their own American people or shoot these foreign troops. All you have to do is tap in on the Internet and you can get a printout of some statistics that will make your blood boil. America is sound asleep, especially the church world, and few people know it. Most think, Oh, but I am in America, what is there to worry about? Yes, you are in America, and you could be ready to be dumped into a casket. That is the way the whole picture looks. Let us continue on here. To me, this type of display of God’s sovereignty and power with Israel in these days of modern military equipment, is God’s way of shaking the world. This shaking will not take five or six years. It is going to come about in such a way that when it is all over and God begins to straighten everything out in the general direction it is to go, the world is going to know for sure that God has intervened, God has shown Himself. That is the beginning of what I call the miraculous era. This is why, when you take that war and see what it means, you connect it with Numbers to see what all happens, and that is what will put the Arab world at a standstill. It has been said by Bill Clinton, that we could be hit by terrorists. How many have heard that? He has made speeches, we could be hit by terrorists. Well that could very well be true. We know this, the Moslem world has made their brags that there is not a place in the western world they cannot hit. We can devastate, they say. We can hit any time we choose. Well I have no doubt that they will try something, but the point is this, That type of boasting coming from an Islamic Arab that has chosen to come over here to make a few extra dollars, that they can desecrate the nation, God is not going to allow him to boast too long in this world. IN the first place, when God turns Israel loose to do in the Middle East what the Bible says she will do, it is basically to show to the Arab people that the God of the Jews is still a sovereign God. He is the Lord, He is the Creator. That is why, when you read the 11th chapter of Isaiah, and you read the book of Obadiah, and you read the 19th chapter of Isaiah, you cannot help but see what Israel is going to do in Egypt, and then what Egypt will do in return, after that. They will build an altar and start sacrificing to the God of Israel. They will build a memorial on the border. Why? Because the miles between the two points is vast, so they want to do that so when the passers by, the tourists and such as come by can see that they are entering into a land which is no longer Islam, but that they are entering into a land that worships the same God of Judah. This is why the world is not prepared for this. I will say this, that neither are there very many Gentile preachers that even have this in mind. They ignore these scriptures. They will take 2nd Thessalonians, Daniel 7, and a few scriptures like that and try to put a finished picture together. That is why many of them will say, but the seventieth week of Daniel is the week in which the antichrist will give the Jews permission to build their temple. How foolish! The Jews will not need permission from any mortal man, when it comes time for them to build their temple. You cannot show me anything like that in the Bible. That is strictly a political, economic peace covenant. It has nothing to do with the antichrist saying to Israel, You can now build your temple. Do you think for one minute that the antichrist is going to go over there and get a soft heart and then tell Israel, I am reading from your Bible, so go ahead and fulfill those prophecies? Do you think the antichrist is going to go over there and tell Saudi Arabia, now you bunch of Islam people, Please come and contribute your wealth, because your cousins want to build their temple? You know what the scripture says. When you read out of the book of Isaiah and see what it says, that out of Saudi Arabia comes a great camel caravan loaded with gold and incense to help decorate the house of His glory, does that sound like an antichrist program? No! Absolutely not! Now I wan tot say this, The world is getting ready to be shaken terribly. By whom? God Himself. For what purpose? Haggai 2 says, Yet a little while and I shake not only the heavens and the earth, but I will shake all nations. The end result is that in the ending of that, all nations will come to Zion. What will they come for? To worship the Lord of hosts. And in this place, what place? Zion. I will give peace to what? The earth, and the temple will already be rebuilt. How is it going to be rebuilt? Do the Jews have that much money? No. But what does God say in the 2nd chapter of Haggai? The gold is mine. The silver is mine. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former. That is why, when you take that to the 60th chapter of Isaiah, you see where the wealth is coming from, from Saudi Arabia. Come on you preachers, open your eyes and read your Bible correctly. You can be sure of this one thing though, Saudi Arabia is not going to contribute one earthly dime as long as she is Islam, and as long as she has this hatred for the Jews. However when God does with Israel what His word says He will do, and does with Saudi Arabia, as stated in Obadiah, what He said about Edom, and the land of Jordan there will be a different picture. That is why, from the land of Egypt, that Israeli army will sweep through that Middle East territory. She will not stop until she hits the Euphrates River. Saddam Hussein, your days are numbered. Jordan, your days are numbered. Why? Because it is all in the book. The children of Ammon shall serve Israel. That is because the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites were all cousins to the children of Abraham. Therefore God is going to restore them back to the same worship that their ancient ancestors had a long time ago. I just want to say once again, Our purpose in preaching this message is not just to be repeating things we have already stated, but to try to show people that they need to stop this thing of hit and miss, jump here and jump there in the scriptures just because some idea sounds good. When are we going to get our minds anchored to something that is sure? I am not trying to present myself as a smart man: but I do have sense enough to know there are scriptures in the Bible that must be fulfilled, and God has a precise order in which that shall be done. Jesus, when He comes, comes exactly right on time, after everything else that is written has been fulfilled in its time. He is not coming one day early, nor one hour late, He will be right on time. People, please wake up to the importance of the Bible being a fulfilled book. If Peter, in his second sermon, could say, Now men and brethren, I know that through ignorance you did it, but I will have you to know that all those things that were spoken by the prophets hath God fulfilled, it was for a purpose. Then He speaks of the day when He will send Jesus again, whom the heavens must receive until the time of restitution, or restoration of all things which have been declared by the mouth of all His holy prophets. Again the solution is to be according to the Bible, not according to our impatient expectation, and our hit and miss diagnosis. Man’s statistics do not prove nor disprove the Bible. The Bible proves whether their statistics are right or not right.